


While You're Gone

by Deannie



Series: Dear Love [3]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama/Romance, M/M, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-05-19
Updated: 1997-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-11 05:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reading his lover's thoughts gives Jim an idea.<br/>Sequel to If I Had You Here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While You're Gone

DISCLAIMER: Your standard thang: I don't own them, Pet Fly and UPN *do*, I don't get no money... You get the idea. 

RATING: PG, light angst 

NOTE: Part Three of the Dear Love series. Please read "Just Because I'm Not There" and "If I Had You Here" before reading this one. Thanks. 

THANKS: To senners who keep me happy with their feedback! 

## While You're Gone

by Dean Warner  


"Jim?" Simon put a hand on his detective shoulder. "You going to be okay?" 

The Sentinel sighed, looking lost now, as he stood in the loft, his partner conspicuously missing from his side. "Yeah, Simon. I just... I don't understand how this could have happened." 

"You can't be everywhere, Jim," Simon whispered. He gazed at his friend for a long moment, before squeezing the shoulder he held. "I'll call you if we come up with anything, all right?" 

"Yeah," Jim whispered back, turning to face his friend, a sad smile gracing his lips. "Thanks, Simon." 

"He'll be okay." 

"I know." Jim straightened up, walking toward the refrigerator. Right now, he really just wanted to be drunk. Maybe then, he could pretend that this evening had never happened. "Call me, okay?" 

"You know I will. If we find *anything*, you'll be the first to know." 

Jim Ellison grabbed a beer as his captain left, and moved to the couch, sitting carefully. Blair should be here, he decided coldly. This couch is always so empty if he's not sitting next to me. 

He tried to replay the evening in his head. Tried to understand just when he had lost track of his partner for long enough to let Thurman get a shot off. 

All he could remember was the blood. 

He stood up again, too restless to be in one place for long. He walked up to the bookshelf, idly running a finger across the tomes displayed there. Mostly Blair's books. His own tastes ran more toward beat poets and spy novels, but Blair's tastes were as eclectic as his wardrobe. Anthropology texts, Arabic poems, sci-fi novels... And then, there were his journals. 

Hundreds of them. Jim wondered when the kid had a chance to write so much. But he never slept, it seemed. Even when they were in bed together, Jim would rouse to find Blair nestled in his arms, wide awake, just thinking. More brain power than one person should have, he'd decided long ago... 

But what a beautiful package to store it in. 

He pulled a journal out at random, opening it to see Blair's neat though frenzied script. He hadn't meant to do more than glance at it, but a line jumped out at him and he stopped. 

"Okay okay... I'll pretend to sleep tonight. And I'll dream of you." 

Jim went to the top of the page, reading quietly, his beer forgotten on the shelf. When he got to the second entry, he had to sit down. One line caught his eyes and his heart: 

"I was nearby for as long as they'd let me be, Jim... Please don't give up on me because they made me go home..." 

Schiavelli, it had to be. It was the only really disastrous case he'd had since he and Blair had become lovers--*if* he excepted the current one. He remembered the case vividly, remembered the two months of physical therapy afterward even better. And he remembered Blair's guilt. He'd had the crazy idea that he should have followed Jim from the truck, he should have been there to help. 

Jim was always silently grateful that he *hadn't*. Schiavelli, thinking Jim was finished (nearly the truth, as it turned out), had gone after Blair next. Only the fact that he'd dropped down to the floorboards in the cab had kept the anthropologist from getting more than a glancing bullet graze to the head. 

As he read, something built in Ellison's gut. Blair talked of them, of their love... But there was a desperation in his words, and the phrase "I couldn't live without you" figured far too prominently. 

Could *he* live without *Blair*? Sure. He knew it instinctively. As hard as it would be--as much as he might *want* to die... He knew he never would. Even if the call came in tonight, telling him that Blair hadn't made it, he knew he could live. He'd have to. If he didn't, then all that he and his lover had accomplished in the last five years would have been for nothing. 

But Blair was... so different. To him, it might truly *be* the end if something happened to Jim. And Jim couldn't bear the thought. 

But what could he do? Once he was dead, would there be any way to convince Blair to move on with his life? He continued reading as he thought, and came upon a paragraph that made his mind start churning out possibilities. 

"Should I give you this journal? When all of this hell is over? Would it make you feel good to know that I love you this much?" 

Was that the answer? Could he, somehow, through his words, teach Blair that, should anything ever happen to him, Blair himself still had to go on living, passing on everything he'd learned, everything he'd experienced? 

Laying the journal on the table beside him, Jim ran upstairs to get a pen and paper, and began to remember... 

The letters were hard to write at first. He didn't know what to say, couldn't put himself in the mindset of talking to his lover from beyond the grave. 

But he knew someday he'd have to. One of them would have to go on alone, and Jim wasn't naive enough to think that it might be him. 

He was just so sorry that it would probably be Blair. 

He thought about their lives together as he wrote, scripting page after page, only to throw half of them into the fireplace, where the flames lapped them up before he had the chance to worry about their rescue. 

It had to be right. The letters had to tell their story--the story that Blair knew so well--but they had to tell Blair just how much Jim loved him, too. 

And it couldn't wait. He sat all night in their loft, too achy for his lover to face their bed alone, and wrote page after page, trying to settle on the best way to help his lover move on, thanking God for every hour that passed by without a call from the hospital to tell him to come and watch that lover die. 

It was a catharsis. After the smell of Blair's blood, and the wail of the ambulance's sirens, and the cautious worry in the doctor's eyes, Jim needed this. 

It was as much to tell *himself* to move on, should the unthinkable happen tonight, as it was for his love.... 

The morning dawned bright and cold, and he lifted a ringing phone to his ear, to hear that his prayers had been answered. His partner had made it through the night. 

Jim knew that his lover would make it now. It was a certainty that only writing those letters had been able to bring him. 

Because Blair would never leave him. 

He wished he could promise Blair the same. But he couldn't. He could only promise him his love and his life--as long as it lasted... 

And he hoped the letters would prove that that was enough.  
  


* * *

"Simon?" 

The knock at the captain's door startled him, and he looked up to see Jim looking in curiously. 

"Jim," he greeted him, gesturing to the chair, and filling a mug with coffee. "I didn't think you'd be in today." 

Jim looked awful, he realized suddenly. He hadn't shaved, he didn't seem to have slept. Simon leaned back on his desk worriedly, and spoke in a soft tone. "You okay?" he asked. "Did they call you about..." 

"He made it through the night," Jim returned quietly. "I just wanted to stop by before I headed for the hospital. He'll be okay." 

"I know he will, Jim." Simon watched as Jim fiddled with a sealed packet in his hand. "What's that?" 

Jim's eyes met his, and the feeling there was almost indescribable. A longing for his lover, a desperate hope... and underlying both, a dose of cold, unfeeling reality. 

"Simon? I have a favor to ask you..."  
  


* * *

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